(Nearly) Useless Warlock Talents
Seems you're new here! If you like this site and don't want to refresh it like a madman, consider subscribing to the RSS feed to get updates delivered to you. Learn more...
Last week, I ran down a list of 12 (nearly) useless Warlock spells. This week, I aim to tackle talents—my list has 30 21 of them. As a result, I’m not going to screenshot all 30 of them. I’m also pushing into Beta talents with the expansion 2 months away. So, without further hesitation, I bring you (nearly) useless Warlock talents.
As a warning, this post is a big one. It will require some time to read. TL;DRers beware!
Affliction
Overall, the Affliction tree is the most solid of our three trees. This is mostly because of Blizzard’s synergization (be there such a word?) of the talents. This tree also has the least (nearly) useless talents, which is good because they’re not entirely that bad. However, this three, like the others suffers from a case of bloat. Yet, this bloat doesn’t pigeon-hole you into utterly worthless talents.
The one major problem with Affliction as a whole is the juggling of DoTs and spells. I’ve said it on the Warlock forums: the cast rotation feels too clunky.
—
Why it’s useless: Spell hit isn’t that important to Affliction Warlocks, especially PvPers. While it does offer mana cost reduction for Affliction spells, it’s nothing more than a place for filler points. Moreover, the hit % is lowered from live from 10% to 3%.
How it could be improved: Further increase the mana cost reduction. This will make the talent more appealing to other specs. Warlock spells are expensive enough as it is (Life Tap is justification for this), a little more mana efficiency could help, especially since Life Tap scales with spirit now.
—
Why it’s useless: At its highest rank, Curse of Weakness reduces attack power by 478. 20% more will bring that to 573. La-dee-freakin’-da! Granted, a blue post indicated that Curse of Weakness will reduce attack speed by 20%, but this just isn’t enough to keep a Retadin from LOL AVENGING-WRATH-THROUGH-BUBBLE-DIVINESTORMing you or a Rogue from PEWPEWing you to death in seconds flat. Also, because Curse of Weakness is a curse, you have to choose between hindering your enemy and damaging him.
Curse of Recklessness is almost worthless now that its armor reduction has been reduced and its Fear-breaking ability has been removed. Besides, this spell has no use in PvP for the Warlock.
How it could be improved: Further increase the attack speed penalty of Curse of Weakness. C’mon Blizzard, Weakness is almost usable now. Just a few more steps…
Allow the talent to make Recklessness reduce spell resistances as well, especially now that Mages get absurd resistances through talents now. Alternatively, give a base (maybe a small percentage) damage increase to targets with Recklessness.
—
Why it’s useless: Affliction doesn’t need mana-regaining abilities, especially with Improved Felhunter and Dark Pact. Also, the soul shard mechanic—while it may be a class-defining quality (and okay by me)—doesn’t merit such a mana regain. People use rank 1 Drain Soul anyway. Oh wait, downranking is going to be nerfed.
How it could be improved: Have the talent turn Drain Soul into a debuff. Note that I said debuff and not DoT. I’d gladly give up the damage component of Drain Soul for an easier way to acquire shards. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed out on a soul shard while my target died too quickly or my Drain Soul was interrupted.
If we’re going to keep the soul shard mechanic, can’t Blizzard make it a little less obnoxious?
Other thoughts: The only reason points would be thrown in this talent would be for the threat reduction, which really doesn’t help with Affliction raiding, as Shadowbolt is the main source of DPS (it’s a Destruction spell). Ironically, I can’t see anyone finding time to cast Shadowbolt while raiding because Affliction is a DoT juggle at the moment.
—
Why it’s useless: With the removal of Fear resistance-granting talents (this is a good thing), this talent really only works against Cloak of Shadow‘d Rogues. Even still, you’re going to have to face the Rogue’s stuns and such after Cloak.
Most importantly, however, this talent that’s supposed to “Improve” Fear actually relies on its failure. Ironic, isn’t it?
How it could be improved: Perhaps the talent can reduce the cast time of Fear by .2 seconds or so. It could also increase its duration or the amount of damage the target can take before the Fear breaks. Really, any change to this talent is a good one.
[Update: As of 8962, Improved Fear (Tier 3) now causes your Fear spell to inflict a Nightmare on the target when the fear effect ends. The Nightmare effect reduces the target's movement speed by 15/30% for 5 sec.
This talent is now very desirable for PvP. The 30% speed reduction compliments Curse of Exhaustion very nicely and gives the Warlock some breathing room. I can see Destruction PvPers throwing some points in here.
Update 2: Apparently, this doesn't stack with Curse of Exhaustion. Still nice for Demonology and Destruction Warlocks to grab.]
—
Why it’s useless: The coefficient of Corruption is 94% without talents. With this talent, the coefficient is 130%. However, the bonus spell damage granted by this talent is fairly insignificant. Corruption is the bread-and-butter spell of Affliction Warlocks. It should pack more of a punch.
How it could be improved: The added spell damage percentage should be at least 50%.
Other thoughts: Blue posts have indicated that instant-cast Corruption would be baseline and that Improved Corruption would increase the damage of Corruption by 20% with a full 5 points. This change makes Empowered Corruption a little better. I do not know, however, how the 20% damage increase factors into Corruption’s damage output.
Okay, so maybe this talent won’t be useless for long, but it is still somewhat weak.
[Update: As of 8962, Empowered Corruption now increases the damage of Corruption by an amount equal to 12%/24%/36% of your spell power.
Excellent. More damage bonuses to Corruption. Thanks to the new Improved Corruption (increases' Corruption's damage by 20%), Corruption really packs a punch.]
—
Why it’s useless: The talent depends on your health being low for the Drain Life aspect. The 30% increase is fairly worthless, especially since this is a tier 9 talent.
The 9% crit offered seems ridiculous to me. Seriously, why 9%? Why not make it an even 10%? This is the only part of the talent that’s good, and 9% more crit isn’t very much. I do not know if this works with Pandemic, though, so there’s hope for this talent yet.
How it could be improved: Remove the Drain Life aspect altogether. Hell, you can remove the crit aspect as well. Why not make the targets take increased damage with less than or equal to 20% health? That, to me, feels more like a bear hug from death. This also further synergizes the Affliction tree with Everlasting Affliction.
Other thoughts: Overall, this talent is very weak for its placement in the tree. In its current form, it’s okay to skip it and dump talent points into the 5-pointers.
[Update: As of 8962, Death's Embrace (Tier 9) increases damage done with your shadow spells by 4/8/12% when the target is below 35% health.
It seems my wish came true. This is now a fantastic talent that tightens the tree's synergy even more.]
Demonology
This tree is a mess. The Warlock community knows it. Blizzard knows it (right?). There are far too many useless talents in the lower tiers of the tree—the term “cluster-fuck” comes to mind. Overall, the tree is full of passive abilities. I don’t like being dependent on my (super-squishy) pet; I want him to compliment my abilities. In other words, this tree needs some serious work.
Of the five talents added to this tree for the expansion, four of them are crit-reliant. This is a problem because not only does the Warlock become dependent on crit, but also his pet. In a PvP situation, resilience will diminish the Warlock’s crit chances and effectively nix the pet’s crits altogether. I’m curious to know why Blizzard planned this. Anywho, enough ranting, let’s go to the talents:
—
Why it’s useless: A 30% increase on Firebolt, Bloodpact, and Fire Shield is nothing to write home about. It’s not horrible, but it is marginal, especially since Empowered Imp was stripped of its strength.
The only way this is useful is if you’re on Imp duty. Wait a second. The tooltip says it increases health, not stamina. Hmm, that means it doesn’t stack with Commanding Shout. So there’s no reason to have a Warlock on Imp duty anyway, especially since the highest rank of Commanding Shout boasts a whopping 2255 health, whereas a TALENTED Blood Pact will only offers 1729 health.
I almost forgot: 30% damage increase on Fire Shield will make the shield deal 44 damage instead of 33.I’m pumped.
How it could be improved: Have the talent increase the amount of spell damage the Imp receives from the Warlock (Read: pet scaling). Or perhaps increase the Imp’s crit chance. Really, anything is better than this now that a trainable ability overwrites Blood Pact.
Alternatively, power could be restored to Empowered Imp. That makes this talent desirable. This talent is effectively pointless now that Empowered Imp is a joke. I’ll get to that talent later.
—
Why it’s useless: Health Funnel is fine as it is. The health cost is insignificant and the healing return for the pet is sufficient.
How it could be improved: Have this talent restore mana to the pet as well.
[Update: As of 8962, Improved Health Funnel (Tier 2) now reduces the damage your demon takes while under the Health Funnel effect by 15/30% in addition to its previous effect.
Now this talent is worth the points. It provides healing for your pet and a damage reduction. This will be an excellent pet defense. Now there's a reason Health Funnel is channeled.]
—
Why it’s useless: I said it last week, the Succubus herself is useless.
How it could be improved: The Succubus needs much more scaling than she’s currently receiving in Beta. Blizzard can’t fix a spell’s talent if the spell itself is broken.
Other thoughts: Seriously, what’s the point of the interruption resistance on the talent if she’s going to get two-shotted anyway? NEWS FLASH: Death = cast interruption.
[Update: As of 8962, Improved Succubus (Tier 3) - Reduces the cast time of your Succubus' Seduction by 33/66/100% and increases the duration of your Succubus' Seduction and Lesser Invisibility spells by 10/20/30%.
Instant-cast Seduction. Not bad. This is certainly a boon for Seduce-nuking. All we need now is some more scaling for the Succubus herself. Also, diminishing returns of Seduce should not share that of Fear. We're getting closer here, folks.]
—
Why it’s useless: Once you hit 80, the Voidwalker is useless beyond questing. I don’t know if Blizzard intends to make him more useful (added the stealth detection to Consume Shadows–it can’t be used in combat anyway), but at the moment, this talent offers nothing to Warlocks who aren’t leveling. Leveling Warlocks should invest in Affliction anyway; the talents are far superior.
How it could be improved: The Voidwalker needs to be made useful beyond questing. Again, scaling and new abilities come into play here.
[Update: As of 8962, Improved Voidwalker renamed Demonic Brutality (Tier 2) and now also increases the attack power bonus on your Felguard's Demonic Frenzy effect by 1/2/3%.
This bonus to the Felguard's Demonic Frenzy is nice for deep-Demonology Felguard Warlocks. Now the talent points spent here aren't wasted.]
—
Note: In order to reach tier 6 of the Demonology tree, you’re forced to throw away points into any of the above talents. Actually, there’s another option: you can dump points into Demonic Sacrifice or Master Conjurer. Huzzah!
See if you can make it to tier 6 without throwing away talent points.
Blizzard, you’ve done an excellent job of trapping your Demonology Warlocks, bravo!
—
Why it’s useless: The damage pets deal is weak as it is. This 20% damage increase is only useful if you’re shooting for a Felguard, and, if you’re not, you can toss some points into the other talents in the lower tiers of the tree.
How it could be improved: Increase base pet damage (Read again: pet scaling). Alternatively, make the damage increase from this talent up to at least 50%. Also, make the damage increase affect Shadow Bite because the Felhunter’s melee damage is incredibly low.
—
Why it’s useless: Situations in which having a pet is not an option are essentially non-existent. The only situation I can think of is the BC Warlock raiding scene. Koraa disagrees with me.
Ideally, in Demonology, your pet shouldn’t die if you can help it because the tree’s talents make you dependent on a pet. Yet, we all know our pets are made out of cardboard and paste–forget what happens if it rains.
This talent makes sacrificing your pet appealing. That alone undermines the entire tire.
How it could be improved: There are tons of suggestions out there for this talent. The best improvement I can think of to remove it altogether. I’d like to see a replacement more along this lines of Demonic Empowerment, which really feels like a Demonology talent. It’s dripping with class flavor.
At the very least move this to a tree that’s not pet-reliant.
Other thoughts: This talent is responsible for the brutal deflowering of the Warlock class’ flavor, especially in raids. It turned us all into Shadow-Mages (I am guilty too). For this reason alone, the talent should disappear.
People have written volumes on Demonic Sacrifice. I’m not about to beat a dead horse.
—
Why it’s useless: The Spellstone and Firestone are useless enough as it is. This talent doesn’t even increase their usefulness.
How it could be improved: If Spellstone and Firestone are getting the love they deserve, perhaps this will be worth the investment.
Other thoughts: I do recall a Blue post indicating that Master Conjuror would be worth the investment. That was weeks ago—we’re waiting.
I do hope, however, that the worthwhile investment is a change to the talent and not to the spells, as the Beta files suggest. I need something to justify this talent.
[Update: As of 8962, Spellstone and Firestone acquired their new forms (see above). The talent now reads: Master Conjuror (Tier 5) increases the effects of your Firestone and Spellstone by 15/30%.
Not bad, considering the new stones, but still not fantastic. An improvement nonetheless.]
—
Why it’s useless: The benefit it provides for a useless spell is incredibly marginal. Does anyone really get annoyed with the attack and cast speed penalty for enslaved demons? Better yet, does anyone actually enslave demons?
How it could be improved: Remove it. This will free up some talent points because God knows we need them after having to throw them away in the first few tiers just to get this far down in the tree.
Other thoughts: Demon-enslaving is an outdated mechanic. While it can be fun, the soul shard/time/mana requirement isn’t worth the result.
—
Another note:
These last four talents I will cover in this tree have a few things in common:
- They are all based upon both the Warlock and the pet’s crit chance.
- They are all passive.
- They, like all other Demonology talents, require a pet that’s inherently squishy.
Why this is bad:
- In PvP, resilience makes critting difficult. It also reduces the pet’s chance to crit (which is very low as it is; again, pet scaling [is it sinking in yet?]).
- The entire tree now becomes pet and crit reliant.
These talents utterly defile the tree. Honestly, how did this even make it to Beta? It’s an incredibly retarded concept. This forces us to itemize in one direction.
It’s not even that critting offers any active benefits for Demonology Warlocks. The entire tree is based upon reaction.
—
Why it’s useless: It’s a five-point talent in tier 9 that offers what a Destruction talent in tier 3 offers. Realistically, it’s not a terrible talent; it’s just another talent point sink that forces the Warlock to play the crit-stacking game.
How it could be improved: Around the realease of BC, I do recall this talent offering a 5% damage increase for both the Warlock and his pet. However, this was changed to crit chance, as Warlocks were absurdly overpowered at the beginning of BC. Yet, now that Soul Link has lost its 5% damage increase and Warlocks aren’t even close to overpowered anymore, this talent could reasonably return to its original form.
—
Why it’s useless: It feeds the crit-reliance of the tree. For its position in the tree, it should give your pet 100% of your crit rating. THIS IS CALLED SCALING. Why should I have to delve to the bottom of a tree that’s broken to get minimal pet scaling?
It could also be unlinked from Demonic Tactics. I don’t see the necessity here. They are only connected by name, really.
How it could be improved: Unlink it from Demonic Tactics and make it give your pet 100% of your crit rating. Alternatively, if Blizzard wants to stick with 30%, it could tack on a few more stats for some scaling (spell damage, haste, resilience). If I have to spec so far into the tree for scaling, it should be damn worth it.
—
Why it’s useless: As I said before, resilience makes pets virtually unable to crit. Moreover, pets receive such little scaling from crit. You can expect this to proc infrequently. So you can kiss your 3% (that’s fairly insignificant considering the talent’s placement in the tree) goodbye. On the upside, your crits increase your pet’s damage. Then again, that’s also insignificant.
How it could be improved: Make this talent proc off normal hits with a fixed percentage (say 20%ish; make it only affect 1 spell instead of 3, to balance it). This way, the talent is less crit (and thus scaling) reliant and still offer some Warlock-pet synergy.
—
Why it’s useless: The buff it provides is too short in duration. The talent is crit-reliant. Resilience essentially negates pets’ crits in PvP. I’ve said it all before…
How it could be improved: See my suggestion for Demonic Empathy’s improvement.
Alternatively, if the fixed proc percentage is too strong, make the Warlock’s crits trigger the buff for his party, and, if that’s too strong, make it a fixed proc chance on spell cast.
Destruction
At the moment, this tree, like Demonology, is in a state of incredible disrepair. It needs serious work. There are a number of talents here that lack synergy or are just plain weak. There’s also some serious bloat in this tree, with so many essential 5-point talents present.
This tree is also the tree with the least utility and the highest damage output. As a result, Destruction is the raid-DPS tree of choice. Yet, there are some problems the tree faces:
- Mana efficiency - Destruction spells are downright expensive.
- Cast times - this is only really pertinent in PvP. Demonic Circle, although it helps, is fairly weak. Destruction Warlocks need time to stand and cast.
- Soul Shards - too many active combat abilities require them.
- Bloat - too many essential 5-point talents. Also, some talents are unnecessarily linked to each other.
- Lack of synergy - Destruction can learn a thing or two from Affliction.
Anyway, these issues aside, let’s look at the talents:
—
Why it’s useless: First of all, it’s been nerfed from live down to 15%. It only applies to direct-damage spells. It’s crit-dependent. Full-Destruction raiders tend to favor towards Incincerate.
How it could be improved: Bring the damage bonus back up to 20%. Make it affect DoTs (for Affliction raiders). Remove the “charges aspect.” Make it just apply the debuff for 12 seconds.
Alternatively, just alter the talent to affect Incinerate as it does Shadowbolt.
These changes aren’t unrealistic anymore now that Shadow Weaving is for the Shadow Priest only. We can’t go to “crazy land” with damage multipliers anymore.
—
Why it’s useless: Its mana cost reduction was nerfed from 6% to 3%. Hey Blizzard, 6% wasn’t enough. Destruction spells are still stupidly expensive.
How it could be improved: Grant a larger mana-cost reduction.
—
Why it’s useless: 10% chance to daze is too low a proc rate. A daze isn’t that effective in keeping melee off of you. Don’t get me wrong, it does help, but it’s fairly insignificant and thus skippable.
How it could be improved: Increase the proc chance. Perhaps make it stun (even for a second) instead of daze.
Compare this talent to Impact (a three-point talent that affects ALL damaging spells) and Blackout (DoTs can proc this).
—
Why it’s useless: The Succubus is an atrociously weak pet with atrociously weak abilities. Lash of Pain is one of them. You’re lucky if she even gets to use it before she’s chopped up like a squirrel in a treecutter.
This talent was useful until Blizzard tossed Empowered Imp into the treecutter with the Succubus. I guess we can throw Demonic Power in there as well.
How it could be improved: Pet scaling. Do I need to keep saying it? Returning Empowered Imp to its previous status would help a lot, too.
—
Why it’s useless: Hellfire, Soul Fire, and Rain of Fire are among the useless spells I laid out last week. A simple chance to stun doesn’t merit the use of these spells.
However, this talent now affects Conflagrate, which is fantastic for PvP.
How it could be improved: Unlink it from Intensity.
I’d like to see the daze effect from Aftermath swapped with the stun effect on Pyroclasm. That would be an excellent change for PvP Destruction, as it offers the Warlock some defense.
—
Why it’s useless: The crit chance increase for Searing Pain is fairly low. I enjoy Searing Pain in PvP, but its damage is too low to warrant frequent use.
How it could be improved: Revert this talent to one of its old forms which gave a lot more of a crit percentage increase. Alternatively, it could offer a secondary effect to Searing Pain (Improved Scortch, but for the Warlock only).
—
Why it’s useless: It’s a 5-point talent for an increase in the initial damage of Immolate only. It’s linked to Conflagrate.
How it could be improved: For 5 points, it should increase the damage of the entire Immolate spell, not just the initial damage. The DPS increase this offers is marginal, at best. Keep in mind that this is a 5-point talent.
Also, for Conflagrate to be truly awesome, it requires a 9 point investment (5 Improved Immolate, 1 Conflagrate, 3 Backdraft). Therefore, unlinking this from Conflagrate makes some sense.
[Update: As of 8962, Improved Immolate (Tier 5) is now 3 ranks and increases the initial damage of immolate by 10/20/30%.
Thank God. Now Immolate does 5% more initial damage and Conflagrate is a 7-point investment. Best of all, however, is the two extra talent points available. It's not significantly easier to choose talents in the tree.]
—
Why it’s useless: It’s not a dependable source of health return; health return is amazing for Destruction because the spells are expensive and require some serious tappage.
How it could be improved: Make the proc chance of this spell 100%. Of course, however, lower the amount of health returned (10% sounds good) or make it a fixed amount (x% of maximum health). Also, some pet healing wouldn’t hurt.
[Update: As of 8962, Soul Leech now affects Chaos Bolt.]
—
Why it’s useless: Like Soul Leech, this talent is not a reliable source of mana return.
How it could be improved: Combine it with Soul Leech. There’s already some serious bloat in the Destruction tree (Conflag is a 9-point investment). If it is to proc on all Destruction spells all the time like my Soul Leech suggestion, it could be a lower mana return (0.5% of maximum mana; right on par with Shadow Priests, Retadins, and Survival Hunters).
[Update: As of 8962, Improved Soul Leech now affects Chaos Bolt.]
—
Why it’s useless: A 20% increased crit chance isn’t worth the investment considering the talent’s position in the tree and the points required for the talent. In PvP, resilience eats crit chance alive.
How it could be improved: Restore it to its old form. When your Imp crits, you crit. It’s that simple.
Alternatively, it could be a chance to proc off of Firebolt casts. This way, the Imp’s crits won’t be negated in PvP.
Other thoughts: Since the introduction of resilience, crit-based trees have suffered greatly. The strength of Destruction lies in its ability to output a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Crits are what make this possible.
What Destruction needs is controlled crit. Shamans have it in Elemental Mastery and Nature’s Swiftness, and Mages have it in Combustion. Controlled crit allows crit-based specs to rise above resilience and maintain their power. In its old form, Empowered Imp gave Warlocks controlled crit. Why was it taken away?
—
Why it’s useless: Immolate isn’t a main source of DPS for both PvP and PvE Destruction Warlocks. Immolate is merely the playmaker. 15% damage increased based on spellpower is pointless if you’re going to Conflagrate the Immolate anyway (and you will because you’ve invested 9 points into it).
Although the increased crit chance of Conflagrate during the final ticks of Immolate is nice, it serves no purpose in PvE. Besides, what happens if Immolate is dispelled?
How it could be improved: Return it to what it was in Alpha (I think it was called Eternal Flames). For those who don’t remember, it made Searing Pain and Incinerate refresh the duration of Immolate (right on par with Everlasting Affliction; tree synergy) and increased crit the chance of Destruction spells.
Alternatively, I’d like to see a talent which makes Conflagrate not consume the debuff Immolate. If Druids can get that for Swiftmend with a glyph, why can’t we have it as a tier 10 talent?
On an unrelated note, anyone notice that Druids’ healing over time spells mirror our damage over time spells? Cool, huh?
—
Why it’s useless: The cooldown. The base damage. The low spell damage coefficient. Lack of uniqueness.
How it could be improved: Increase the base damage and spell damage coefficient. Make it pierce through immunities again. That makes it fun and makes it feel like a Destruction spell. This way, it serves a purpose in PvP as a finisher. I don’t see why I can’t damage a bubbled Paladin who’s going to Avenging Wrath wtfpwn me anyway. If piercing immunities means a longer cooldown or lower base damage, I can live with that.
Alternatively, return it to its Alpha form as Decimate. An immunity-piercing POM isn’t overpowered as a 51-point talent (POM is a 21-point talent).
Other thoughts: Overall, this spell doesn’t feel chaotic at all. It feels like Searing Pain with a cooldown that will catch Frost Mages and Priests off guard.
[Update: As of 8962,
- Chaos Bolt (Tier 11) mana cost reduced. Now causes the effect Chaotic Mind when used.
- Chaotic Mind - Damage done by your Immolate has a 8% chance to cause your next Soul Fire spell to be instant cast, cost no mana and consume no soul shard. Lasts 8 sec.
- Causes 1036 to 1314 damage and is a 2.5 second cast (2 seconds with Bane).
- Is now affected by Shadow and Flame in the same manner as Incinerate and Shadowbolt.
Finally, Chaos Bolt feels like a Destruction spell. It has a high damage output in addition to the Chaotic Mind proc, which gives Destruction some excellent burst potential. I still think it should pierce immunities, but I'm content now.]
——————
Final thoughts:
This post took a lot of time for me. That goes to show you how much work the Warlock talent trees need. Note that I probably did miss a few other talent-related concerns, but I did include as much as I could. Also bear in mind that these are my opinions. My suggestions may been overpowered, but they’re not absurd or unreasonable.
Anyway, I hope you YAWN readers enjoyed this. I figured I had to make a post about these talent trees given the current state of WotLK Warlocks and given the chaos on the forums.
I’m just doing what I can.
[Update: Article updated to reflect 8962 changes.
9 talents were improved. Some are still situational, but now they're not useless. Good job, Blizzard. Keep going.]
Related posts:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
I must admit I don’t agree with all of those.
Supression is cool, but it should affect all spells, not only affliction. It did receive a serious nerf (down from 10% hit), and mana cost reduction is not that necessary.
Improved Fear would greatly help today, but in Wrath it will be useless. That default 1% spell “miss” chance will be removed, and given enough spell penetration on PvP gear (and we do have enough it seems) resists shouldn’t happen — except perhaps on a mage since they are getting a lot of resistances.
Health Funnel (and the talent) needs some serious work. Hunters got Mend Pet instant cast HoT long long time ago, would it really be so game-breaking for us to have the same? And yes, the core problem is still there: pets are far too squishy. The Health Funnel change wouldn’t make our pets overpowered nor make them survive versus warriors, but might give a second or two for a healer to help them out.
Demonic Tactics and the Improved Demonic Tactics should make our pets crit in PvP sooner or later, but still it’s pretty marginal.
Demonic Pact does look interesting for PvE, but the question is how many warlocks will actually be raiding as Demonology?
Chaos Bolt is plain bad as it is right now. It should be instant cast, but obviously with a higher cooldown. Make it a two minute cooldown if you wish, but increase the damage a bit and again, make it instant cast.
I don’t think destruction is bad for PvP just because it relies on criticals. Mages have high crit ratings as well, yet do quite good in PvP (although many would disagree with me).
You also didn’t mention Nether Protection: it is much better then before, but I would love to see it turned into melee damage resistance rather than spell.
I think you’re going at the wrong angle for Demonology and Destruction.
I’d like to see pet cast times reduced to 3 seconds and given a 2-4 minute cooldown, as well as changes to the following talents:
Demonic Sacrifice
Passive (from active ability)
When a summoned Demon dies or is despawned, the warlock gains one of the following buffs for 15 seconds:
-Imp: Increases critical strike chance for the next 4 spells by 25%.
-Voidwalker: Gain 5% of your total health every 3 seconds and reduce all damage taken by 15%.
-Succubus: Gain 25% additional Shadow damage, but increase the cost of all spells by 30%.
-Felhunter: Gain an anti-magic shield equal to your spell power.
-Felguard: Increases all damage and critical strike chance by 10%.
Fel Domination
15 minute cooldown
Resets all Demonology cooldowns except for Fel Domination. This includes Soulstones, Metamorphosis, and Summon abilities.
Master Summoner (0/2)
Reduces summoned demon’s mana cost by 10/20%, and increases the duration of Metamorphosis by 15/30 seconds.
For Destruction, the recent changes look promising. However, I’d like to change NP and Empowered Imp a bit:
Nether Protection
After being damaged, there is a 20/35/50% chance to gain Nether Protection, which reduces damage of the given form by 25% for 10 seconds. This ability stacks up to 2 times.
Empowered Imp
Increases the Imp’s critical strike chance by 20/40/60% of the warlock’s critical strike chance, and all critical hits done by your imp have a 33/66/100% chance to increase your critical hit chance for your next spell by 33%. This effect lasts 8 seconds.
Furthermore, I’d like to see talents affect Shadowflame in some way. It might as well be in Demonology for how effectively Destruction talents affect it specifically.
I disagree with some of the comments on the grounds that useless talents at level cap may be a boon while leveling. Particularly improved drain soul for instance. It becomes the first continuous mana feed source almost 10 levels before drain tanking becomes viable.
Judging talents in term of their viability at cap is all fine, nonetheless there’s 69 (79) levels to go in-between, and I for my part am quite fine with having a couple of sparse tools which may become pointless at cap while I travel on the journey to there.
New beta build is up and many talents have changed.
I couldnt disagree more with some of your assertions in respect to the affliction tree. Here are some of my thoughts:
Suppression: Very useful talent for warlock’s that aren’t hit capped. 5 points here are necessary for Warlock’s just starting out in Karazhan. For PvP, I agree its mostly useless.
Improved Drain Soul: Useful for Warlock’s leveling up cause it allows for the regeneration of some mana.
Also you stated, “Ironically, I can’t see anyone finding time to cast Shadowbolt while raiding because Affliction is a DoT juggle at the moment.” - Well if you’re not using Shadowbolt at all cause your juggling DoT’s, well then you’re doing it wrong. Having all your DoT’s up at all times, and casting shadowbolts in between is how you keep affliction DPS up in raiding.
Empowered Corruption: Points spent here are very useful in that every extra piece of damage you do helps. In raiding on trash its common to throw up corruption and Shadowbolt spam them down. This goes for all specs. Adding an extra bit of damage to Corruption helps every so little.
Honestly, you probably could re-write this whole article in a raiding perspective and get very different results.
Well, Suppression never really merits 5 points even in Karazhan. The main source of Affliction DPS is Shadowbolt.
In regards to the Affliction DoT juggle, I mean the PTR/Beta DoT juggle.
Also, for clarification:
The talents listed are, as I noted, NEARLY useless. Of course they’re not all useless; however, they may be incredibly situational (leveling/raiding/PvP).
I’m also going to update the article given the latest changes.
There, the post is updated. We’re getting a little love now.
Things are looking better for us.
Correct me if I’m wrong:
Spell hit cap, TBC: 16% to reach 99%
5/5 Suppression, TBC: 10%
Remaining: 6%
Merged Hit cap, wrath: 9%
3/3 Suppression, wrath: 3%
Remaining: 6%
So it’s… a buff?
I have a pedantic objection to your comments on Demonic Sacrafice. Sounds like your objections all fall into the category of “it’s just wrong.” With that I agree, but useless? Not at all. Killing off the fel hunter, for example, gives a warlock a near bottomless mana pool during boss battles. That’s pretty useful. Killing off the succubus boosts shadow damage, again very useful to a destruction warlock.
But I completely agree with it being counter to the whole concept of Demonology warlocks. Make it go away, beef up our demons - that’s what I’d like to see.
“That’s pretty useful. Killing off the succubus boosts shadow damage, again very useful to a destruction warlock”
I think that was his point. This shouldn’t be in a tree that should focus on synergy with pets, not destroying them. You don’t see anything in the Hunter BM tree that gives you a sweet DPS buff by fighting without a pet, right?
I agree that DS is useful and boosts our DPS -but- I don’t understand the logic of a PET class being better by not using one, you know? Especially with this talent being in the “pet tree”. I’d say move it to Destruction or change the mechanics.
I wouldn’t mind it if they made DS something to use if your pet was going to die, just to get a 15-20 buff or something.
Inappropriate != Useless
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=useless
I *said* I was being pedantic.
Nice post! it covers all or almost all major concern warlock’s community have. I should have demand a lot of work to write and I really enjoy reading it!
***it should**
many many many of these i disagree with you on. Currently i am in the beta and PTR and i can say that all 3 trees are working very well with the new changes to everything. BUt there are still some that need to be repalced like demon sac, imp enslave, imp imp, emp imp, aftermath, fire and brimstone, and frailty. All of the other ones besides those you mentioned are fine. Right now my felguard is critting like a truck and im getting that buff continually even in PVP. TO me that is very very good.
A few thoughts.
* Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t like to see Demonic Sacrifice removed: I’d like to see it shuffled into Destruction. It does more good for them than for Demonology warlocks anyway; it’s bad for them for the same reason that the version of Metamorphosis that dismissed the demon was bad.
* DoT/Sbolt shuffle: how can this really have gotten any harder in beta? The only addition I saw was Haunt, unless we get new actual DoTs I haven’t seen yet.
* Like several people mentioned above, Suppression is pretty important for afflocks before hitting the hit cap. After that it can be freely shuffled out and put into other things.
* How’d you miss Shadow Embrace? I cannot think of a more useless talent in its current form, though it’s getting better in Wrath from what I’ve seen. I’ve never seen a tank make or break because of Shadow Embrace’s 1% to 5% physical damage reduction.